On Fri, 26 Mar 1999, Barbara Ruhmann <brruhmann[_at_]ucdavis.edu> wrote:
>
> It can be noted with Dover, however, that the price of their books, as
> compared to the prices of other books, is considerably less (esp in
> their "Thrift Series"). This could be construed as cost of materials
> and marketing only, much as we do on our campus with reproduced items
> that are sold in the bookstore. We charge the cost of the repro plus
> our margin, or cost of making the material available to the student.
> If there are copyright fees, they are added in to the total cost. With
> Project Gutenberg and other e-text pages, the material is free, but to
> obtain a hard copy, one must use one's own materials and resources -
> ie, computer, printer, paper and time. These are usually not "free".
The term "free" has two distinct meanings and people who are not aware of the fine differences are bound to be confused. "Free" can be understood in terms of freedom and cost.
When public domain materials are said to be free, it means that the individuals are not subject to many restrictions as in case of copyrighted works. They may have to pay in order to acquire the public domain materials. But, once they have them, they are at liberty to do almost anything to the materials.
"Free" as in the expression "free license" means that people do not have to pay for the additional cost known as the royalty. Yet, they are still subject to the terms and conditions as outlined in the license and also the copyright law.
It is the freedom that some decopyrighters care more than the profit and/or royalty.
Joseph Pietro Riolo
<riolo[_at_]voicenet.com>
Received on Sun Mar 28 1999 - 13:59:13 GMT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : Mon Mar 26 2007 - 00:35:35 GMT